2.5.1 Service design
This section starts with the most pertinent definitions for service design, followed by the de-velopment of this particular field of research.
According to Moritz(2005), service design is a field that encourages competencies(p. 15), which is needed to design the overall experience of a service and the processes required to deliver the service successfully (p. 39). Also, Miettinen and Koivisto (Eds.) (2009) states that it bridges business, technology and design perspective (p. 35). They writes that the service interfaces are intended to be “useful, usable and desirable from the client’s point of view and effective, efficient and distinctive from the supplier’s point of view (p. 15).”
This field has several definitions. 31 Volts Service Design (2008) presents a story of coffee shops (as cited in Stickdorn & Schneider, 2011, p. 25). If there are two shops in the same location and they offer the same products, the reason that the customer chose one of them is the point made by service design. (p. 25). Another definition can be “a practice of designing processes to provide a holistic service to the user” by The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (2008, as cited in Stickdorn and Schneider, 2011, p. 23), and can be a design special-ism to help develop and deliver great services by Engine Service Design (2010, as cited in Stickdorn and Schneider, 2011, p. 24).
Similar to the definition of service design, terms to describe those who receive the service and who provide can used differently by authors. As seen from the above quotations, “clients,”
“users” and “customers” would mean the former group, and “suppliers” would mean the latter. The term, “providers,” is also found to express those offering services in the articles by Stickdorn and Schneider (2011), Miettinen and Koivisto (Eds. 2009), and Polaine, Løvlie and Reason (2013). While “users” “suppliers” and “providers” could deliver concrete meanings regardless to their contexts, “clients” and “customers” might give vague impressions to read-ers. In this study, if the terms are quoted or referred to with the name of the authors, the same words will be used to make links with the original sources. In other cases, “users” will be the main term for people who receive services.
Service design developed as a result of the improvement of user- and customer-oriented satisfaction and was connected to the areas of industrial (Polaine et al., 2013, p. 18), product and interface design (Miettinen & Koivisto (Eds.), 2009, p. 15). Looking back to the works by industrial designers in the past, the focus was to fill fundamental human needs, with new
industrial technology, in materialistic ways first, and it shifted to quality of life, like sustain-ability (Polaine et al., 2013, p. 18). On the other hand, in the field of operations management [OM] in the early 1930s, the value was built on the efficiency of the use of “men, methods, materials, and management (Stickdorn & Schneider, 2011, p. 96).” According to Stickdorn and Schneider (p. 96), Services were recognized as an OM concern in the early 1960s, and the early OM approach to service design was regarded as “production-line approach to services”
in the 1970s by Ted Levitt, where such ways were focused on maximizing the number of cus-tomers and minimizing the cost.
As service design is often introduced as multi-disciplinary, the areas related are various. For instance, Moritz (2005, pp. 48-49) mentions that it integrates management, marketing, re-search and design. Stickdorn and Schneider (2011) writes that the disciplines incorporating service design could have also engineering, IT, architecture and psychology (p. 48) besides the ones mentioned before.
According to Polaine et al. (2013, p. 38), social science is one of the studies that service design is built on and which help gather insights into the experiences, desires and motivations from both sides, users and service providers. Service design covers what happened in every scene including processes, organisation, business and preparation (Moritz, 2005, p. 41). Also, it is mentioned as an important factor that successful service design integrates stakeholders in an earlier time of its process (Stickdorn & Schneider, 2011, p. 58). Altogether, service design could be intended to take every possible stakeholder’s feelings into consideration from the beginning of its design process.
In academia, service design as a term was presented by Sasser and his colleagues (Stickdorn
& Schneider, 2011, p. 98) at the Harvard Business School in 1978 while figuring out the de-tails relating to service performance. When the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne in-troduced the term in an academic design research and education in the beginning of the 1990s, the concept of “design” was regarded just as means of making products beautiful and expen-sive, and needed to be redefined in design education (Miettinen. & Koivisto (Eds.), 2009, p.
32). According to Miettinen and Koivisto, service design is also emerging as a response to complex economic and social issues (pp.32-33).
2.5.2 Understanding services
According to Polaine et al. (2013), in developed countries, approximately 75% of the econ-omy is related to the service sector (p. 28). The value of services can be obtained only when users experience them (Polaine et al., 2013, p. 23). Smooth connections between each process in one service make the quality of the service better, while services can often be provided by not designing its whole sequences but only some parts (Polaine et al., 2013, pp. 22-23). That is why service designers are hired. According to Moritz (2005, p. 57), service design can be
a crucial player in the success of any organisation. It enables organisations to understand true market needs, increase the value of services and change organisational culture (p. 57). Also, Stickdorn and Schneider state that services are intangible, co-produced while being delivered, and not easy to set one standard definition (2011, p. 105). Polaine et al. (2013) state that the value provided by service can have several aspects and it is categorised into three groups, care, access and response (p. 28). The aspects can overlap each other (p. 28). The first group, care, includes healthcare and maintenance (p. 29). The second group, access, can be infra-structures, such as utilities and the internet, and also shared services (p. 30). The last group, response, can be found in teachers, receptionists and emergency services, where users can have responses from the services (p. 30).
The incidents that evolved behind the scenes of the provided services affect customers’ ser-vice experiences (Polaine et al., 2013, p. 33). In the example of Shouldice Hospital (Stickdorn
& Schneider, 2011, p. 98), while operations management was aiming to make things a “swift, even flow” to extend the production line in the operation on both visible stages and not, de-signers needed to take care of all the events that unfolded. Even though some parts of services can be invisible to users, it can become clear and obvious when the services stop being deliv-ered. For instance, if one element of basic infrastructure, such as the internet is disconnected, users will notice how inconvenient daily life is when they cannot use it. That can be a moment that users understand what they receive from services and it will be an advantage to the busi-ness of the service (Polaine et al., 2013, p. 31).
Service design aims to create “useful, usable, desirable, effective and efficient service experi-ences (Moritz, 2005, p. 40).” Stickdorn and Frischhut (Eds.) (2012) writes that service expe-riences often connects users’ evaluations and feelings to the services, which is shaped from
“service quality, perceived value and satisfaction” (p. 12). While designing the whole picture of services, better service experiences are attainable by improving interfaces or Touchpoints where the users can interact with the system.
Touchpoints are “individual tangibles or interactions that make up the total experience of a service” as described as if they are pieces of puzzles (Moritz, 2005, p. 182). In other words, Stickdorn and Schneider (2011) explains that it is “every contact point between a customer and the service provider (p. 27),” and can be added or replaced with new and more effective ones from weaker ones (p. 131). Graphic mint (2015) introduces that it may not only interact physically, through letters, advertisements or by a person in a store, but also on website, by phone and chat services. For instance, when a person books a travel ticket, the touchpoints can be at customer desk when gathering information from a person and brochure, on its web pages while searching their various offers, and texts from customer services while receiving the confirmation.
According to Stickdorn & Schneider (2011), identifying touchpoints is crucial (p. 151).
Touchpoints are used to reveal what customers experienced and how they felt throughout the service, and also for further analysis when focusing on specific touchpoints (pp. 151-152).
2.5.3 Service design processes
Like improving products, service design helps to clarify services by addressing quality prob-lems (Moritz, 2005, p. 66), while aiming to attain higher satisfaction from users. This could be regarded as soft factors, however, the service design approach can reach such hard factors as positive economic results, successful operations and fruitful policy outcomes (Polaine et al., 2013, p. 131). It is discovered through nonlinear processes and iterations of the process (Stickdorn & Schneider, 2011, p. 117).
Service design has several phases or steps in its process. It can contain four iterative steps as a basic approach, however, according to such authors as Best, Mager, Miettinen and Koivisto (2006; 2009; 2009, as cited in Stickdorn and Schneider, 2011, p. 118), there are also different frameworks made up of three to seven or more steps that share the same mindset. The model by Stickdorn and Schneider is defined as Discover, Creation, Reflection and Implementation (p. 118). The four-step approach, also called the four D’s, introduced by Moritz (2005), starts from Discover, through Define and Develop, and finally to Deliver, works in “the ongoing live-cycle of services,” and can evolve continuously (p.39). Another four-step approach is de-fined as Discovery, Creation, Reality and Implementation (Mager, 2009, as cited in Miettinen
& Koivisto (Eds.), 2009, p. 13).
The first phase, Discovery, involves understanding the surroundings of the services and the stakeholders. In the second phase, Creation, the designer uses that gathered information to shape some ideas through visualisation and co-creation. In the third phase, Develop or Reflec-tion, the outcomes from the last phase enables the designers and stakeholders to make prac-tical solutions by checking the possible progress with the new service prototypes. At last, the developed ideas are implemented in the Deliver or Implementation phase, as introduced by Moritz (2005, p. 39) and Miettinen and Koivisto (Eds.) (2009, p. 13).
The ideas gathered among various stakeholders are the basis to create solid concepts, and co-creation is introduced as one common approach to ideation (Stickdorn & Frischhut (Eds.), 2012, p. 19). Visual thinking helps to make more constructive ideas through modeling and a radical attitude can let the designer “go beyond the imaginable” solution (Miettinen. &
Koivisto (Eds.), 2009, p. 38). As a result, service design would help address the perspective of the users, the original feature of services, while integrating expertise from different disci-plines, being interactive and ongoing.
In the service design process, ideas are developed while being co-created with the
stakehold-ers, therefore skills for facilitation are essential. According to Wilkinson (2012), the term, facilitation, can be defined by many activities, yet he defines the term facilitated session as
“a highly structured meeting in which the meeting leader as the facilitator guides the partici-pants through a series of predefined steps to arrive at a result that is created, understood, and accepted by all participants (p. 5).” As Table 6 shows, he groups also facilitators into four roles: Meeting adviser, Meeting manager, Meeting leader and Participating facilitator (p. 6).
According to Keltner (1989), “facilitative functions” are the skills like helping the group build the agenda, encouraging them to talk and making them feel free to contribute without a time clock (Bradford, 1974, as cited in p. 32). Mackewn (2011) represents various skills to facili-tate workshops such as “creating silence,” “formulating questions” and “making decisions,”
and states that many of them were contradictory and paradoxical (pp.3-4). For instance, facil-itators can suggest people to make some meanings and allow them to have multiple possibil-ities, while the meanings can be given and one possibility can be settled on by the facilitators (p. 7). Considering these examples, “facilitator” can only support the leaders and initiate the discussions to lead the conclusion in which all participants accept by having paradoxical skills to take actions in different situations.
There are three features that service design has. First, one of the features in service design’s process is that it is ongoing. After implementing certain solutions, it continues to monitor how the service work for constant improvement (Moritz, 2005, p. 47). Second, service design often deals with human behavior (Miettinen. & Koivisto (Eds.), 2009, p. 41) and focuses on human-centered design (Mager, 2004, Holmlid & Evenson 2007, as cited in Miettinen. &
Koivisto (Eds.), 2009, p. 87). History in development of service design shows that this fea-ture was raised while industrial design was growing. Lastly, co-creation is an important point in service design. It works in two ways: by involving clients and external specialists into con-tinuous design thinking, and turning customers into “co-creators” of value (p. 38). “Designing with people and not just for them” makes a difference from classic user-centered design and much of marketing (Polaine et al., 2013, p. 41).
Mentioning the processes of service design thinking which were presented by different au-thors, Miettinen and Koivisto (2009, p. 14) introduces these following important factors to consider in order to develop service design processes. It is understanding the service-de-sign-related challenges and what the users experience and feel in the service, co-creating ideas with stakeholders, developing the services continuously and making it succeed as business.
The service design challenge can be found in such connections with users, business, environ-ment and applicable technologies. Also, a challenge can be found when translating the service experience into manageable service encounters and service delivery, besides specific service environment where customers can get the most positive influences (Stickdorn & Frischhut (Eds.), 2012, p. 13). The importance of understanding is often emphasized by different au-thors. Moritz (2005, p. 55) explains that service design is based on the necessity of
under-standing the portfolio of related fields. In Miettinen and Koivisto’s (2009, p. 38) article, they mention that understanding the behaviour of people is often needed.
2.5.4 Tools and methods in service design
Tools and methods are implemented to get better understandings in service design, and they focus on designing, describing and visualizing the customer experiences (Koivisto, 2007, as cited in Miettinen, 2007, p. 89). Such tools as shadowing, mapping, interviews, user journals, and observation techniques are used to understand the perspectives and situations of the cus-tomers (Mager, 2004, Best, 2006, Miettinen, 007, Merholz et al., 2008, Strnad, 2008, Partício et. al., 2008, as cited in Miettinen & Koivisto (Eds.), 2009, p. 257). It is enabled by tracing the same experience as the customers have, visualising the relationship of the stakeholders, lis-tening to the voices of them and observing what customers are having through the service (p.
257). Also, in a list of “5 principles of service design thinking” (Stickdorn & Schneider, 2011, p. 26), visualization is used to make tangible evidence from intangible services.
Service design has commonalities with design research methods, according to Miettinen and Koivisto, because it contains the ideas of innovation and the possibilities using several meth-ods in the same process (2009, p. 63). One of the methmeth-ods used in service design is qualitative research. It helps designers to have deep understandings of what seems illogical (Polaine et al., 2013, p. 40).
To gather insights from the users, the most common approach is ethnographic methods (Stick-dorn & Frischhut (Eds.), 2012, p. 18) where designers observe the customers in certain situa-tions to identify problems and needs related to the service (Miettinen & Koivisto (Eds.), 2009, p. 187). Stickdorn and Schneider write that design ethnography is built on the long history of ethnography, the starting point of which can be as early as 1960, as some anthropologists have interacted with people to see their motivation deeply (2011, p. 107). Design ethnography can serve as a bridge among the service users, the service providers and the service designers (p.
Table 6. Different types of facilitators (Wilkinson, 2012)
Type Role
Meeting adviser Helping the leader plan the meeting when asked or needed Meeting manager Setting the agenda and initiating the discussion
Meeting leader Besides the role of Meeting manager, promoting participants’
engagement in the discussion while keeping the discussion focused
Participating facilitator Starting actions like Meeting leader, promoting participants’
engagement in the discussion and giving the facilitators’
opinions
108). Although it needs to note that the research conducted by designer can be not as proper as done by ethnographer, ethnography can be the root of some of insights-gathering methods for service design (Polaine et al., 2013, p. 50).
2.5.5 Customer journey map
A customer journey map is one of the tools used in service design. According to Tassi (n.d.), it is an illustration of what users experience from the service and how they interact with touch-points. The map does not cover only the actual moments where users experience services, but also their experiences before and after. (Miettinen & Koivisto (Eds.), 2009, p. 15). Every service process is considered to have three phases: the pre-service period, the actual service period and the subsequent post-service period (Stickdorn & Schneider, 2011, p. 33). The pro-cess starts from the earlier phase that the service is being needed and recognised.
Maps can be created by interviewing customers, but they can also document themselves by blogging and recording (Stickdorn & Schneider, 2011, p. 151). Besides visualising the service path and its touchpoints, it is important to collect stories and information to know why the current journey has been made up by seeking the circumstances, motivations and experiences (p. 154). Maps would help people to understand the service and improve it as well.
A customer journey map consists of both “the service provider’s explicit actions” and “the customer’s choices (Miettinen & Koivisto (Eds.), 2009, p. 143).” Some information can come from beyond the control by the service providers (Stickdorn & Schneider, 2011, p. 153), such as by talks among users’ closer people and by reading articles. Users decide their actions from various information and there are often several options to take. Service could be multi-chan-nel (Stickdorn & Schneider, 2011, p. 153), for instance, by face-to-face, messages and the interfaces through the internet. All possible users’ actions need to be illustrated on a customer journey map. Similarly as a classical blueprint does, a customer journey map describes each step of the flow of the service, but emphasizes more how information flows and what kind of tangible devices are taken in and remove the inessential information (Tassi, n.d.)
By having other methods and observation, a customer journey map could help to find new customer needs and systems for businesses (Miettinen & Koivisto (Eds.), 2009, p. 143). This could be enabled by the overview from a customer journey map. It would also make the comparison easier and quicker with other experiences, services and competitors (Stickdorn
& Schneider, 2011, p. 153). Polaine et al. (2013) mentions these advantages from customer journey maps. Besides its effective aspects to understand the model more quickly than texts, a customer journey map gives views from all of the different parts of a service provider and the understanding of customers’ feelings, thoughts and actions in the process of the service (p.
104). The maps are used for three purposes, according to Stickdorn, Hormess, Lawrence and Schneide (2018, p. 42): to collect users’ stories visually and transparently, to understand how
existing services work and reveal both users’ needs and opportunities for improvement, and to visualize future services.